My name is Blanche White or I should say it used to be. I have always hated my name, I mean who would name their daughter Blanche? It’s a cruel thing to do but cruelty was a talent my mother cultivated. She was The Little Engine That Could, cruel was the fuel that kept her chugging up the endless hill of her miserable life. And then to add insult to injury - White: frail, pale, definitely female, I was branded from the minute my name was stamped on my birth certificate. When I was in the 6th grade I tried to change it to Abbruhen Weib. Since there are Germans in my lineage, I went to my translator app and came up with Abbruhen Weib. It wasn’t easy, the German language throws in umlauts and those weird big “B’s” helter-skelter and most keyboards in America don’t have umlauts or those big “B’s” - nothing I could do about that. I think abbruhen has something to do with cooking and weib means white which is probably one reason why I almost married a black guy. I thought Abbruhen Weib had an interesting ring to it, but it was not to be because the clerk behind the counter in the Montclair Town Hall just laughed in my face when I told her what I wanted to do. Bitch.
I grew up a fish out of water - a misguided, ill-advised child of the suburbs in Montclair, NJ. The relationship between my mother and I turned incendiary almost from the day I was born, she was scared to death of me and for good reason. Even I was scared to death of me. If I happened to glance in a mirror I saw a tall hubristic girl with great posture, long brown hair, an insolent expression, world-weary blue eyes surrounded by an abundance of black eye makeup and cargo pants. My wardrobe consisted of rags, usually black, I bought at the local thrift shop even though we could afford LL Beans and Macys. My days consisted of acts of defiance, my nights spent roaming the streets of Greenwich Village when I was way too young to be doing so.
Montclair High School was calamitous for me, the entire experience was a bit like one long acid trip. It was during those four years that I refined my poetic talents, developed my fascination for the strange and fell in love with words. I learned next to nothing. The poetry thing sprung out of nowhere. I would see someone, write a poem and slip it to them under the desk. There was this kid named Max. He loved cars, all he wanted to do was tinker with cars, he probably is raking in the bucks these days fixing old German sports cars. Anyway I wrote a poem:
There once was a young man named Max
Who had a backseat full of jacks.
He’s a guy I admire
He can change a tire
Or put out a fire.
I ooze with desire
To cuddle with the young man named Max.
Max read it, turned as red as a beet, handed it to the guy sitting next to him, and so it began - my illustrious career as a poet.
“Blanche, we want you to be happy here. How can we do that?” The three of us sat around a small round table, three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, see how they run. Who will run first? My mother, wearing pearls, lots of perfume, and her “I-am-pissed-but-I-am-willing-to-listen” expression, wore stilettos, Gus Peterson, the guidance counselor, was in his usual: khakis, a pale blue shirt and Converse hightops which enabled him to kind of prance down the hall, and me in my cargo pants and flip flops. My money was on Gus, he’s the one in those running shoes, I’m sure he could turn a prance into a sprint in a moment’s notice. A piece of paper sat on the table, on the paper was written:
There once was a teacher named Gus
Who was neat, couldn’t tolerate a fuss
His hair was not thick
He was a bit of a prick
A pain was that teacher named Gus
Gus looked like a wannabe basketball player. During the four years I was matriculating in that cesspool of higher learning he lost most of his hair. It was always a surprise to him when he ran his fingers through his hair, only to find none. Where did it go? His eyes were a pale gray and rather haunted - probably due to worrying about his hair loss.
“Blanche, You are one of my smartest and most talented students,” Gus told me glancing at the poem, one hightop resting on top of the other. “Have you given any thought to what you would like to do with your life”? He never said boo about the poem, his face was deadpan, a complete blank.
Now there’s a loaded question to ask a 14 year old. “I’m very sorry about the poem, it was uncalled for and childish,” I said to Gus, avoiding his question. I really was sorry, it was not my intention for him to read it, and I have no idea who gave it to him. I’ll have to be more careful with my mini masterpieces from now on.
“You can have a brilliant future, Blanche.” He ran his tremulous hand through his thinning hair, hoping to find a bit more, but it was not to be. My brilliant future was not to be either.
“I think you might like A School Within a School. It is a less structured environment, you might do well there. You seem to have “a heuristic style of learning.” Would you like to try it?”
“Sure, sign me up. I don’t know what a heuristic style of learning is, but whatever. I’m game.”
“It means you learn well through trial-and-error and problem solving.”
What a joke. School Within a School. Talk about trial and error, we were free-range chickens, coming and going as we chose, reading what we wanted, and smoking lots of weed. Our problem solving consisted in figuring out how to cut school without getting caught. I became more and more rebellious and then I fell in love with a black guy named George Brown. It all happened quite quickly. Everyone called him Crazy Legs because he ran like crazy on the football field.
There was an Adonis named George
On the football field he did forge
His legs were amazing
His eyes they were blazing
And those kisses were great, by George
When Crazy Legs and I hooked up we found our literary soul mates, or at the very least partners in crime. We wrote poems together and scattered them throughout the halls of Montclair High.
There once was a man named Obama
Whose election caused quite a trauma
He claims he is black
While denying the fact
That he had a very white mama
It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? One night after smoking some rather potent pot he wrapped those crazy legs around me like a boa constrictor and said “Let’s get married and move to Germany.” Germany seemed like a good idea to me at the time, needless to say he could be quite convincing using those crazy legs as weapons. I agreed to the latter, but not the former. Marriage was not a part of my game plan but the names were perfect, my name was White, his name was Brown: (“Truth can be more cruel than caricature.” or as they say in Germany, “Wahrheit kann grausamer als Karikatur.” You gotta love it.) George was born in Germany, had duel citizenship, spoke fluent German and promised me I would never see anything like the German language when it came to words. As I told you before, I love words.
We arrived in Hamburg, a port city in Northern Germany, on a butt cold January afternoon. Although my passport said Blanche White, both George and I told everyone my name was Abbruhen Weib. I was just happy that I was finally in the land of umlauts. For awhile, everything was great, new country, new name, but it is sad but true that wherever you go, you take yourself with you. One of the first shocks was realizing that afternoons in winter in Germany end quickly. By 3:30 it is dark. Cold cold cold and dark. Some obscure German relative had found an apartment for us, a rat hole, but at least it was a roof over our heads. George was in his element. He will always be one of the kindest, gentlest of men and I will love him forever even though he broke my heart in a thousand little pieces. As soon as we stepped onto German soil he blossomed, it was as if Montclair had been his cocoon while he waited patiently to bloom. His skin glowed, he looked like one of those dark devil/angels that make girls salivate. He sang gospel hymns in German. He knew where to shop, where to get the best food in the cheapest places. He talked to everyone on the streets whether they talked back or not, and Germans as a rule, don’t talk back, they are a taciturn bunch who dress each day prepared for battle. You don’t see many pastels on the bus. I liked it.
Hamburg was the beginning of the end for Crazy Legs and me, it wasn’t long before those legs began wrapping themselves around sweet frauleins all over town. I should have known, he was quite a catch, but I really didn’t care, familiarity breeds contempt or as the Hamburgians would say grobe vertrautheit verachtung. I taught German teenagers English. I loved them, most of them had the same punk wild side I had not so long ago. It was easy to see why The Ramones were so popular in Germany. We taught each other Ramones lyrics: Suzy is a head banger (Suzy ist ein Hauptknallkörper.) Try finding a rhyme for hauptknallkorper. I also taught English to two German architects. They almost wept over their drawing boards when I offered to sing Suzy ist ein Hauptknallkorper to them as a bit of comic relief. A serious pair, those two.
“Here’s what you need to do.” Crazy Legs and I talked shortly before he moved out. The departure was amicable, civilized and funny. I knew that as long as I stayed in Hamburg he would make sure that I was OK, and I was. I made enough euros to keep me afloat and I have always been good at landing on my feet.
“You need to be on the prowl for a Danube steamboat company captain and then you need to bump him off.”
“What???”
“You heard me, either a Danube steamboat company captain or some bozo who sells liability insurance.”
“OK, I’ll bite, why?
“It’s the word thing. The name for the widow of a Danube steamboat company captain is Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe.”
“I love it!” It’s times like these that I realize how much I will miss my Crazy Legs. “But insurance? An insurance salesman?”
“Yes, it’s Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, automobile liability insurance,”
I never found that steamboat captain, but I did find a nice German man named Felix who sells insurance. We have been together for three years now. He uses me in all his ads. I sit behind the steering wheel of a Volkswagon or BMW that has clearly been in a wreck. I am a damsel in distress (ein junges Mädchen in der Qual) who is clearly in need of insurance. He dresses me in pale colors for most of the ads but I change into black as soon as the photographer leaves.
